Editorial: It’s the climate, stupid

THREE of the most controversial ingredients in politics – race, gender and age – are conspiring to make this year’s US presidential election one of the most engrossing ever. After seven years of a president from the most predictable demographic (white, male, middle-aged) Americans are facing the prospect of being led by a woman, a black man or a man into his eighth decade (and we’re not talking about Ralph Nader).

Voters are bound to be influenced by the personal characteristics of the candidates, just as they will be by economic considerations. But there is another factor that many Americans will hopefully be taking just as seriously because of its future impact on everyone’s lives&colon; how the candidates plan to deal with climate change. All of them appear to recognise the urgency of this issue – to the relief of those who have watched the Bush administration’s attempts to brush it under the carpet. John McCain, the leading Republican, has pledged to introduce a trading system to help reduce US carbon emissions by 60 per cent compared with 1990 levels by 2050. Both Democratic contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have gone further, proposing 80 per cent cuts by 2050 (see “Obama, McCain, Clinton&colon; who is the greenest of them all?”).

To ensure that such matters get a proper airing, a group backed by several thousand leading scientists and scientific institutions has launched a campaign to persuade Clinton, Obama, McCain and Republican second-placer Mike Huckabee to take part in a presidential debate on science. Lawrence Krauss, one of the organisers, wrote in this magazine two weeks ago that such

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